


The Pawn

by annieoakley1



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annieoakley1/pseuds/annieoakley1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss has his pearl to comfort her, but all Peeta has are his precious memories of her, and the Capitol is trying to take them away.  Warnings for violence and torture.  Italics are reworded excerpts from "Mockingjay".  Written for Prompts in Panem's Round 3, Day 1 challenge.  Visual Prompt: Peeta's Pearl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pawn

 

 

 

He is physically fine.  There is a bruise blossoming under his right eye, but it’s only a little tender.  His own mother gave him worse.  But emotionally, he feels like a rubber band stretched between two fingers, and he’s not sure how much longer it will be until he snaps.

 

He thinks of her face.  Of her smile as she fed him broth.  Thinks about the way she felt curled against his side, her head resting right over his beating heart.

 

“Mr. Mellark?”

 

He looks up to find Snow entering the small, empty room where Peeta has been kept since he was returned to the Capitol.  Snow is flanked by the two Peacekeepers who have been keeping watch on Peeta since he first awoke.  The one man, the taller of the two, is the one responsible for his only injury, and Peeta’s sure the man was showing great restraint by limiting himself to only one hit.

 

Snow asks what he knows.  _Nothing._ It’s been his pat answer, but it’s also the simple truth.  He knows nothing of any rebel plan.  Nothing.

 

“Is Katniss with them?” he asks the president, and Snow nods once.  “Our sources indicate that she is well.”

 

A Peacekeeper wordlessly moves a chair near Peeta for Snow to sit, and Peeta watches him carefully as he slinks down on it.  Snow is a snake and Peeta hates him, but Katniss is his only priority.  “She doesn’t know anything, either,” he vows.  “She would have told me.”

 

“Would she have?”

 

“ _Yes_ ,” he replies tersely.

 

Snow discusses the rebellion, and he seems no more bothered by the current uprisings than a man annoyed with a fly swarming around his head.  It worries Peeta, and the more Snow talks, the more worried Peeta becomes.  If it’s true and the rebels are only days away from being defeated, Katniss’s position is a precarious one. 

 

“So many lives are at risk now, Peeta.  Aren’t you tired of fighting?”

 

“I never asked for _any_ of this,” Peeta snaps.  He meets Snow’s stare and refuses to be the first to break it.

 

“I know that, Mr. Mellark.  I do.  And because I’m confident that you did not play an active role in this initiation of battle, I’m going to ask for your help in ending it.”

 

As Peeta’s brow furrows, Snow speaks further to clarify.  “I’ve arranged for an interview with Caesar Flickerman to tape tomorrow evening.  You always choose your words so wisely, Mr. Mellark.  I have utter faith in you to continue to do so.”

 

He gently shakes his head, his eyes blinking in confusion.  “I don’t know what to say.  I don’t-”

 

“You will be speaking to the entire nation, Peeta.  The citizens and the rebels.  You will be in the position to ask everyone to consider the consequences of their actions.”

 

“You want me to condemn the uprising?  Pledge my allegiance to the Capitol?”

 

Snow’s smile is slow and scary.  “Much more than that, Peeta.  I want you to paint another picture for Panem, but this time, using only your words.  And I want you to ask for a ceasefire.” 

 

“What’s in it for me?” he asks without hesitation, and if Snow is taken back, he recovers nicely.

 

“Well, firstly, your health and well-being.  Your continued comfort while-”

 

“I don’t care about _any_ of that,” Peeta says, his voice low.

 

But again, Snow’s reply falls from smiling lips.  “Ah, of course not.  You are quite the martyr, Mr. Mellark.”

 

“I want you to me promise me she’ll be safe,” Peeta says, undeterred. 

 

Snow nods as he stands, and he catches Peeta’s eyes before turning away.  “Convince them, Peeta, and you can have anything you want.”   On his way out of the room, Snow stops to address the Peacekeepers.  “He is not to be touched, understood?  Find the imbecile responsible for the mark on his cheek and have them taken care of immediately.”  The one Peacekeeper nods as the other blanches, and Snow looks back at Peeta, again grinning.  “For pity’s sake, the poor boy must be terribly bored.  Why don’t you find a pack of playing cards to help him pass the time.”

**

 

_She feels inside the parachute and slides her fingers inside until they curl around the pearl.  She sits back on her bed cross-legged and finds herself rubbing the smooth iridescent surface of the pearl back and forth against her lips.  For some reason, it’s soothing.  A cool kiss from the giver himself._

**

 

The torture begins the next day.

 

After the interview with Caesar, Snow expressed his displeasure with Peeta’s approach.  “I did exactly what you asked of me,” Peeta insisted.  “I called for a cease-fire!  I condemned the fighting!  What more did you want?”

 

“I wanted you to convince them, Peeta.  And you failed.”

 

The first thing they bring out are tiny, spade-shaped daggers.  There are several Peacekeepers on rotation, and the two largest are with him right now.  They tie his wrists to the wooden chair, binding him so tightly that he is only able to move his fingers.

 

“They need him for more interviews,” the one Peacekeeper tells the other.  “We still can’t touch his face.”

 

He picks up the dagger and demonstrates what is to be done on his own hand, miming the back-and-forth motion a safe distance from his nail.  Peeta’s breath catches in his throat when he sees, and as the one man grabs his palm and holds it still, the other wields the small weapon with a grimace. 

 

“Please, don’t,” Peeta begs. 

 

They move so slowly.  That’s the worst part of it.

 

He thinks of her hair, always plaited in that long bread.  He remembers the way it smelled of vanilla after her showers on the train.  He can still feel it tickling his nose as they slept, his arms wrapped tightly around her.

 

He screams.

_**_

_As soon as her mother and sister are asleep, she slips the pearl from the drawer and spends a second sleepless night clutching it in her hand, replaying Peeta’s words in her head.  “Ask yourself, do you really trust the people you’re working with?  Do you really know what’s going on?  And if you don’t….find out.”_

_**_

He’ll have another interview tonight, he’s told.  Snow is not at all happy, and Peeta has the physical wounds to prove it.  His ribs ache with every inhale and exhale, and he’s sure his back is the color of ink- splotches of black, blue, red; every position he finds himself in is a painful one.

 

The hurt he can handle, as long as he knows Katniss is okay.  They showed him the videos of the propos she’s participating in, and he was so many things when he saw them: confused, mostly; hurt, inexplicably.  But, above all others, relieved.

 

When they start in on him again, he retreats once more to his safest place, closing his eyes and picturing her face.  She’s preoccupied most of his thoughts since he was 5-years-old, but now he has memories, not daydreams, to help get him through the worst of times, and in this moment he is grateful. 

 

He remembers the kiss on the beach, the way her lips felt pressed against his before she sagged against him and gave in.  As her tongue slid against the seam of his mouth, he realized that this was not for the cameras, but for them.

 

He dances in and out of consciousness, their final times together playing on loop in his mind.  The Peacekeepers must believe he’s passed out.  They speak in hushed whispers, and while he misses some of the information they exchange, he hears enough.

 

Everyone in Thirteen ( _Katniss_.  Katniss!) will be dead by morning.

 

Well, not if he has any say in the matter.

**

 

 

_She crouches, her back supported by the wall, to check what Gale had managed to rescue in her hunting bag.  The plant book, the hunting jacket, her parents’ wedding photo, and the_ _personal contents of her drawer. Her mockingjay pin now lives with Cinna‘s outfit, but there‘s the gold locket and the silver parachute with the spile and Peeta‘s pearl. She knots the pearl into the corner of the parachute, buries it deep in the recesses of the bag, as if it‘s Peeta‘s life and no one can take it away as long as she guards it._

**

 

Lavina’s heart gives out almost immediately.

 

But it takes days to finish off Darius.

 

There are bits of flesh in the puddles of blood on the floor.  Peeta’s vision is still blurry from his own beating earlier, but he can still make out the severed finger on the ground, near the heel of his boot.  He squints.  The nail is missing.  That’s right…they took that first.

 

He thinks about the white fur she was draped in that day the snow.  She looked so beautiful, he knew immediately he wanted to capture that moment for forever.

 

 

**

 

He doesn’t know anything.  He is of no use to them anymore. 

 

He doesn’t know why they don’t just kill him.  He wishes they would.

 

“Mr. Mellark, I think there are some things we should show you.”

 

They watch tapes together for hours, and Peeta’s horrified when he realizes how much Snow has seen, how much he knows.

 

All the memories he’d been focusing on so intently in the last weeks are now being played out for him: the rooftop, nights on the train, every kiss from the cave to the Capitol.

 And there’s more, things he’s never seen before, like her lips against Gale’s.

 

“Peeta, there is so much you don’t understand.”

 

The doors open, and a Capitol woman dressed in crisp whites enters the room with a tray.  Peeta tenses when he sees the syringe.  He doesn’t know what’s going on, but he knows it’s very bad.

 

As they inject the substance into his veins, the videos continue to play.

 

He closes his eyes and thinks of her face.

 

**

 

Johanna’s screaming again, and it paralyzes him.  Once his heart broke for her, but now his body tenses for another reason.  Now he knows that once they’re done with her, they’re coming back for him.

 

However many minutes or hours later, the screaming stops.  A short time passes, and then the door opens and the woman appears again.  The man following behind her goes straight for the television as she sticks the needle in his arm.  “Please,” he begs her.  “Don’t.”

 

But the walls are already melting onto the floor, and colors flash before him.  Bright and shiny.

 

He thinks of her face and tries to block out everything else.

 

 

**

 

“Just kill me,” he begs her as the liquid burns into his veins.  He can feel it filling him.  “Please.  I can’t do this anymore.  Don’t you understand?  I can’t!”

 

The woman says nothing, and then she leaves the room as the tapes begin to play.

 

His body convulses as the venom coats his veins, and he thinks of her face to calm him.  But he’s never seen her like this before, with her eyes narrowed at him, her lips curling back in a snarl. 

 

He thinks of her face and he cries.

 

-End


End file.
